Promoting opportunity, not envy
Walking through my constituency in Soweto observing the damage done to property, local business and community relations by the recent looting of foreign-run spaza shops, it became clear that the causes were not immediately obvious, and the solutions hardly more so.
I got a different story depending on who I spoke to. First up was the commander of Moroka police station, where the media had camped out on Thursday to get, like me, a first-hand account of the scale of the problem at hand. The station brigadier seemed to have things under control. His officers were escorting scores of Somali, Bangladeshi and Pakistani spaza shopkeepers, their cars and bakkies loaded with goods, out of the township to safety. His priority was to lessen the temptation for looting by the marauding gangs of mainly young Sowetans out for an illicit bargain. Crime prevention and arresting the often drugged-up perpetrators came first. Digging deeper into cause and effect was for a later time.
Thankfully police efforts soon took effect, and by the Sunday things had quietened down - but simmering anger and resentment remained. Many of the callers into radio stations blamed police complicity in allowing foreigners to set up their shops as the underlying problem. Why is it, they asked, that police are so often found loitering around these shops while leaving others alone?
In Naledi I spoke to a young South African who runs a small spaza shop from his mother's garage. He told me the residents had prevented "foreigners" from getting a foothold there. They were not welcome, though nothing prevented locals from plying their trade. Here, bonded houses are the norm and home-owners have succesfully kept their neighbourhood foreigner-free. His explanation for the looting was pithy: unity. The foreigners form close-knit networks, enabling them to buy and sell goods cheaper than the locals can. In his neighbourhood, though, price - 50 cents on a loaf of bread - is not the deciding factor for choosing where to shop.
In Emdeni things are different. RDP houses predominate and the poorer residents find it harder to stop - or else welcome - foreigners setting up shop. For them, with little to spend and without cars to get to the malls, cheap means attractive. This was one of the hot-spots for the criminals.